Terrain Power: Floating Castle, Part 2

Continuing in the redux of Remains of Empire, here are some terrain powers that I've used with great success in the finale encounter with the adventure's villain, Bozidar. In it, the PCs confront the final enemy in the ruined throne room of the shattered, floating castle. The magic spells holding the castle aloft have been greatly weakened, and as such, being of sufficient skill can warp the spells. The Dungeon Master should go out of his way to show off these terrain powers to the players, by having Bozidar use them frequently and by having a lareg font printout of the terrain powers laid out on the gaming table.

This is a tricky encounter to pull off. It requires the participants to all think in three dimensions, and envision this room rotating about. While there are many enterprising ways of representing a three dimensional encounter, those of use without the patience or arts & crafts skills will have to get creative. When I ran this encounter, I used a small marker, a business card with a large arrow printed on it, to indicate which surface of the room was down. I then had extra tiles, the long 2x8's, placed down beside the floors to represent characters on the "walls". Relative to the real world table (and its real world physical constraints), all of the minis moved while the Dungeon Tiles stayed stationary.

Rotating Room
At-will Terrain Power (Level 6)
At-will
Move Action; Personal
Check: Arcana  DC 23 [Hard]
Effect: The room rotates 90 degrees in any single axis. Each creature standing on the current floor of the throne room must make an Athletics DC 15 [Moderate] check to hold onto the a peice of the wall or other stable object and dangle from the new ceiling. While holding onto the wall in this way, the creature grants combat advantage to all attackers. A creature may also make a DC 23 [Hard] Acrobatics check to land safely on the new floor. Otherwise, the creatures are knocked prone and thrown onto the floor, taking falling damage as appropriate.

Features of the Area
Stained Glass Windows: A creature that is knocked into the window when the room is rotated shatters the glass and must make a saving throw. On a failure, the creature falls 90 ft. down to a floating peice of shattered castle outside, taking falling damage as appropriate. On a success, the creature is prone, hanging onto the window edge.

Terrain Power: Floating Castle, Part 1

Awhile back, I posted that I'd be revamping the DDi adventure Remains of Empire with some extra features and try to bring out its sweet nectar of good storytelling from the cancer-riddled corpse of bad mechanics.

To start with, let's add some fun tricks. Here is a series of miscellaneous terrain powers that I used for my go at Remains of Empire. I sprinkled them throughout the encounters that take place once the PCs start hunting down the villain and his drake cavalry in their floating castle lair. I'm using these terrain powers to help tell the story of the collapsed tower, how it is nothing more than a ruin of its former glory.

This first terrain power is really fun in play, and literally shifts the battlefield around. In a highly lucky encounter with a lot of 20's, you start with a straight-up fight and end up with a game of island-hopping as the melee Strikers/Lurkers/Skirmishes try to outflank the Defenders/Soldiers on their way to the ranged combatants. This could also be reflavored for fighting on a floating island of garbage in the sea, breaking apart as the encounter progressed, an iceberg breaking apart in the arctic waters, or a bit of solid rock on a bubbling flow of lava.

Also, here are  a few terrain powers that can be used almost anywhere in the second half of the adventure. They're good all-purpose kind of terrain powers, in that they provide that all-important boost to damage or good tactical choice when all encounter and daily attacks have been exhausted. I've opted for a minor action attack here, which I think should be used more ften than it is. When you ask a player to sacrifice a Standard Action for a terrain power, you're really asking them to give up one of their class attacks. Class-based attacks are comfortable, familiar, and help define the character.  If you want your terrain to be used, either make the actions into Minor, or make the effects really spectacular.


Collapsing Castle
At-Will Terrain (Any Level)
The power of the Arkhosian rituals are being weakened. The flying castle is ripping apart and destroying itself, the strength of the ancient spells no longer capable of holding it together.
At-will
Free Action; Personal
Trigger: A creature rolls a critical hit
Effect: A crack forms in the ground, moving a section of the castle by 1 square. A gap between sections of the castle now exists.

Floating Debris
At-will Terrain Power (Level 3)
You jump up and kick a floating piece of rock, sending it hurtling towards your enemies.
At-will
Minor Action; Ranged 5
Attack: +8 vs. AC
Hit: 1d6+5 damage and the target is pushed 1 square.

Gravity Well
At-will Terrain (Level 3)
The ancient Dragonborn ritual has left pockets of transmuted gravity in teh wake of the castle's destruction. These can trap absent-minded explorers in a spiralling vortex.
At-will
No Action; Area of gravity well
Trigger: A creature starts their turn in the area of the gravity well.
Effect: The triggering creature is restrained until escape (DC 21).

Oil Cauldron in Gravity Well
Single Terrain (Level 3)
A globule of flammable pitch has been caught in this gravity well.
Single Use Terrain Power
No Action; Area of gravity well
Trigger 1: An area or close attack with the fire or lightning keywords touches the gravity well area.
Trigger 2: A character lights the gravity well area on fire with a torch or other source of flames.
Effect: Until the end of the encounter, creatures starting their turn in the gravity well take 2d6+9 fire damage.
 

Remains of Empire

Remains of Empire was a 3rd Level DDi adventure put out about a year ago (or more?), authored by a Kolja Raven Liquette. It is a varied mix of good and bad, but like any good Dungeon Master, I was able to distill out the bad and take the good for my own uses. Really, I think that's the best one can really expect from most published adventures. The gist of it is that the heroes stumble into a village under attack by drakes, they fight off the drakes, chase them back to their lair, and defeat the mastermind villain.

So, what's so bad about it? Well, firstly, the author or editor or whomever is in charge here is having a hard time grasping the full extent of the 4E ruleset. They got some generalities down, and they know how to get from point A to point B, but they are clearly struggling with the ruleset. It's hindering their storytelling. My feeling is that the author originally wrote this for another system, likely 3rd Edition, and then tried to hastily port it over to 4E. Here are my three biggest peeves about this adventure:

1. The Alpine Peak
When the heroes are tracking backthe drakes to their lair, they have to cross a towering mountain peak.

The alpine peak rises steeply. It can be scaled only
with a climber’s kit (hooks, hammer, and pitons) and
rope, which the villagers will provide. The distance
to be climbed is 1,000 squares. The speed of ascent
equals the slowest character’s climb speed per minute
rather than per round. Total climbing times at various
speeds are shown on the table. The climb itself is
tiring and slow but not especially dangerous. Everyone
will reach the peak without mishap; the only
variable is how long it takes and whether the climbers
are ambushed, as noted below.

Climb Speed_Time Needed
4___________4 hrs, 10 mins
3.5_________4 hrs, 45 mins
3___________5 hrs, 30 mins
2.5_________6 hrs, 40 mins
2___________8 hrs, 20 mins

What function does tracking the speed up the mountain serve? What difference does an extra 4 hours make? Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. These are needless numbers. At best, they take up room in the article and distract the reader. At worst, they eat up an hour of game time at the table as everyone tries to figure out what the group's climbing speed is, why it matters (it doesn't!), and should they make precautions to hurry it up. I like the idea of the mountain being the challenge. I like the idea of low-level characters having to face the bitter cold winds, icy goat paths, and crumbling stone of this thing. This could be a really good storytelling device, I imagine that in the author's home campaign is was really interesting, but here it's just algebra homework.

2. The Floating Debris
It turns out that the drakes' lair is in the ruins of a shattered, floating castle. The imagery is excellent (more on that later), but the mechanics are wonky. Here, the author implies for the Dungeon Master to map out the entire debris field, with random tables. I kid you not. Here's an example, cut out for brevity:

Elevation__Chunks per 3x3 Area_Size of Chunk
0–40 ft____3___________________1-2: Tiny (3–6 inches)
_______________________________3-4: Small (1–2 feet)
_______________________________5–6: Medium (3 feet)
40–80 ft___2___________________1–3: Tiny
_______________________________4–6: Small
80–120 ft__1___________________1–6: Tiny


And that's it as far as mechanics go for how this field of floating, shattered castle pieces are interacted with. To me, this implies that the author intended Dungeon Masters to map out every last Tiny size piece of rock, and then let PCs hop from one to the next, at increasingly higher elevations, like an Italian plumber. Do the drakes attack during this time? Are there any additional hazards? Are the players supposed to roll Athletics checks all afternoon and hope their character don't plummet 100ft to their deaths?

3. An Omission
The last big peeve of mine can't be demonstrated by what's there, but more by what's not there. There are no combat encounters, skill challenges, hazards (besides what I've already talked about) that have anything unique to do with the fact that the PCs are on a floating, shattered castle. All the combat and skill challenges and well, everything, takes place in a typical dungeon layout with typical dungeon type enemies. The theme here is serpent cultists of Zehir, but that's hardly unique. I'm paying money for this adventure. Not very much when you break it down, but this is a paid product. And I'm getting generic encounters that I could have whipped up on my own in about 5 minutes with the monster builder, or just the DDi compendium.

Redemption
But this adventure is also really great. The vividness of the fluff is awesome. If you haven't picked up on this yet, let me spell it out more clearly.

The adventure takes place in a floating castle that is also wrecked!!!

Huzzah! But the rules are really getting in the way here, or maybe the lack of rules to really capitalize on this cool idea. The author clearly knows what they're doing in terms of storytelling, but something junked up in the translation to DDi. The Calming the Drake skill challenge, wherein the PCs can gain a drake mount of their own, was fairly well done, but could be a lot better. I want it to be better, because I want these mechanics to be as cool and fun as the idea of the PCs riding through the skies on the back of a drake!
So maybe that's my greatest peeve here. The adventure isn't living up to its potential, and I feel like it should.

What I intend to do in some upcoming posts is try to apply my skills to this great kernel of an adventure and let it grow into something truly remarkable.